


scheherazade

by cassandralied



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Bisexual Character, Creepy Eldritch Anatomy, Cunnilingus, Denial, Dubious Consent, F/F, General mindfuckery, Kidnapping, Memory Loss, Monsters, Nikola Orsinov is her own warning lbr, Non-Consensual Touching, Not Canon Compliant, Possessive Behavior, Season 3 Spoilers (probably), Typical Stranger Creepiness, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, canon typical gore, playing fast and loose with timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:27:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22965391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassandralied/pseuds/cassandralied
Summary: Georgie isn’t even sure Jon is coming, and the thought fills her with nothing so much as a tired resignation....Nikola's goons arrive at the wrong time, Georgie gets taken instead of Jon, and everything goes downhill from there.
Relationships: Georgie Barker/Nikola Orsinov, hints of Georgie Barker/Melanie King, referenced past Jonathan Sims/Georgie Barker
Comments: 29
Kudos: 57





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I do not consent for this story to be copied to any third-party app or site and only consent to it being posted on Archive of Our Own.

A plastic-smooth hand traces its fingers down Georgie’s face, caressing her jawline, and she would have recoiled if there was anywhere to go. “Your skin is so _soft_!” the thing that introduced itself as Nikola Orsinov trills delightedly. “You must moisturize regularly! Why, I could peel you easy as a peach!”

Fingers that are _sharp_ in a way they shouldn’t be pinch Georgie’s cheek. “Are you quite done?” Georgie asks, irritated. “I’ve told you, I don’t know where the hell Jon is. He left while I was at work, and threatening me really isn’t going to change that fact!”

The mannequin pauses behind the chair she's currently strapped to, one cold and empty hand on the warm brown skin of Georgie’s shoulder, which dimples slightly under the irregular pressure. “You’re not afraid,” Nikola says. Her tone is still irritatingly chipper, and the human wonders if her captor is actually this cheerful or just built that way.

“Don’t take it personally, love,” Georgie says dryly, and she gets the impression that the creature’s pouting despite having no mouth. “I’m not capable of feeling fear.”

“Lots of meatsacks say that,” Nikola sniffs, and she’s _definitely_ pouting. “Less so once I’ve begun with them.”

Georgie’s muscles tense, but it’s out of habit and not genuine fear, even as Nikola unveils a tray of dreadfully stereotypical-looking horror movie surgical tools covered with rust and dried blood, because why be original, it’s just murder.

“Those don’t look particularly clean,” Georgie comments, because it’s clear Nikola is expecting her to say _something_. “Will you turn up the thermostat, by the way? Your goons took my jacket when they were trussing me up in here.”

“You really are broken,” the ringmaster observes with a high, cruel laugh. “Did the Archivist do this to you?”

Her captive stares at the smooth, white spaces, slightly indented, where eyes should be. Her voice is very even. “Why do you care?”

“Because I’m bored, кукла. I _wanted_ to make you scream, but it’s not nearly as nourishing when I can’t taste your fear, and I can’t peel you until the Archivist is here to see so you might as well tell me a story!” Nikola tilts her head in a parody of consideration. “I suppose we could get straight to the peeling and I could just draw it out a little more, for timing sake.”

Georgie isn’t even sure Jon is coming, and the thought fills her with nothing so much as a tired resignation. Even if he did come, whatever powers he’s growing into could hardly be a match for Nikola’s gang of freaks, even without whatever creepy powers they’ve surely got under their skins.

Georgie senses the impatience in Nikola’s eyeless stare and just because she can’t feel fear doesn’t mean she wants one of those infected scalpels inside her. So she begins her story.

At some point during it, Nikola’s settled into Georgie’s lap, too-smooth fingers curling in the woman’s thick hair, tugging experimentally as if testing something. Nikola hums when Georgie talks about Alex, an imitation of human interest or perhaps sympathy. She gasps theatrically when Georgie repeats the cadaver’s words, and when she’s finished, feeling bare, feeling _naked_ , there’s a silence.

“That was a good story!” Nikola says finally. She wiggles on Georgie’s lap, the bright buttons of her shorts digging into Georgie’s jeaned crotch in a way that should be more unpleasant than it actually is. “We’ll have another one after your bath, I think.”

“My —what?”

Nikola hums pleasantly and pats Georgie’s cheeks. “Breekon! Hope!”

Without the default of fear, Georgie’s simply angry. She doesn’t want those grubby goons touching her bare skin. _Fucking hell_.

* * *

After her bath, she isn’t taken back to the chair. Instead, she’s dragged into a room that isn’t quite as bare as the others. Nikola’s waiting for her, tangled in the pale gold sheets of queen sized bed wearing a neon green wig and a tacky pair of Mickey Mouse pajamas.

They hadn’t bothered to provide her with clothes, but Georgie’s a little too annoyed and tired to be self-conscious, so she just glares.

Nikola somehow beams without a face. “Georgina! You’re back!”

“I didn’t much have a choice,” Georgie snaps, wringing the dampness out of her curls and walking over stiffly to sit on the edge of the bed —might as well, the room had no other furniture and if Nikola wanted to fuck her, well, a few feet didn’t seem like it’d make much of a difference. She wonders if the mannequin had any weapons on her, and then chides herself. Nikola Orsinov _is_ a weapon.

A weapon that’s giggling. “It’s been So Long since I’ve had a sleepover! With someone _alive_ , even! What a Treat!

“Now,” the monster sighs, before Georgie has the chance to object to the long-fingered and inhuman hands cupping her soft breasts. “Tell me about how you met the Archivist.”

And Georgie still wants to live, here in this bed with Nikola’s not-breath against her neck, so she obeys.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She tries not to blame Jon for surely abandoning her...  
> But despite all that a dull, burning part of her is starting to hate him.
> 
> -  
> Georgie gets little a traumatized (am I doing the meme right?)

It’s maybe four or five days when they come to find her. Time enough for Georgie to get used to Nikola sharing her bed and singing her softly to sleep, nonsense words or Russian, Georgie can’t tell the difference. Georgie keeps telling stories, little things like her first kiss, and it’s not like talking to Jon —in a weird way, it’s better. At least with Nikola, Georgie has the freedom to choose what she wants to say.

She tries not to blame Jon for surely abandoning her. He’s been busy, and Nikola’s dangerous. She doesn’t even know if he’s told Melanie what’s happened to her, probably assuming her dead. Or maybe his creepy boss won’t let him go looking.

But despite all that a dull, burning part of her is starting to hate him.

“What do you need Jon for, anyway?” she asks one night after sex. It’s not rape, she thinks. After all, she’d let Nikola put her hands on her, encouraged her, even lapped at the unnaturally smooth bit of plasticine she’d called a cunt until Nikola made the proper noises and pretended to come. _Georgie refuses to be made a victim in any more ways._

Nikola sighs happily. She has one arm round Georgie’s shoulders. “Does my малышка want a story?”

“It’s only fair,” Georgie replies, mild and obedient. Nikola’s hand is in her hair again, more gently. “I told you about my mums and everything. It’s your turn.”

Nikola tells her everything. Tells her about the beauty of the Unknowing, the steps of the great dance cheered on by the songs of its victims’ agony. “You still haven’t told me what this has to do with Jon,” Georgie says. She doesn’t think about what a person sounds like without skin. She can’t.

Her ribcage is cupped ever so gently between Nikola’s lineless palms as they lie on their sides, legs tangled together. ( _how Nikola had loved mapping out the tattoo on her ankle!)_

“It’s a _dance_ , Georgie!” Nikola chirps, and she should have known it’d be bad because the mannequin almost never uses her name anymore. “I have to have something _new_ to wear. Something nice and snug and _wet_ , something nobody’s ever tried on before…”

Georgie doesn’t know how closely disgust is tied with fear, but she manages to gag.

“And _nobody else_ will look as good as me,” Nikola says. She giggles. “Imagine, me! A servant of the Eye! Isn’t it silly?”

Georgie can’t reply, as Nikola presses the lower half of her face to Georgie’s ear and whispers silkily, “Will kissing you be different, do you think, in his body?”

For the first time since Nikola’s kidnapping, Georgie dreams. It’s not her usual dream of the dissection room and the tragic, watching figure. No, in this one Georgie’s still in college, with her long skirts and bellybutton piercing hot against her skin. She’s kissing Jon in the library, and it’s stilted and a little awkward but endearingly so. This is where the memory ends. In the dream, Jon pulls away from her, cups her face in his hands. When he speaks it’s with Nikola’s voice. “Did you think I’d forget you, дорогой?” Nikola-Jon asks, and it’s so tender that it _hurts_. “You’re my very favorite toy.”

Georgie Barker can’t feel fear, so why the hell does she wake up soaking Nikola’s sheets in sweat?

* * *

“I’m going out, pet,” Nikola says when she’s finished bathing Georgie (she does it by hand, now, after Georgie broke Breekon’s nose. Or maybe it was Hope’s.) Georgie clutches the towel tighter around herself, hates the way her voice breaks when she says, “Are you coming back?”

If Nikola had an expression, it would have softened, and she cups the back of Georgie’s neck to draw her into the closest thing a monster without a mouth can call a kiss. “Of course I’m coming back, дорогой,” she murmurs. “I’m not done with you yet.”

But that’s the day that they comes to rescue her, Jon and Melanie, accompanied by two cops and two assistants.

It’s the blonde cop who finds Georgie, slamming down the door to their bedroom. There’s an interesting sort of horror in her eyes as she takes in Georgie, naked and half-asleep in their bed, but it only lasts a moment. “Jon! Basira!” she calls. “I found her!”

There’s Jon, making a soft, startled noise that Georgie doesn’t think she’s ever going to forget as she huddles under the stained sheets. And then the shorter cop, the one with the hijab, is taking off her sweater and jacket and wrapping them around Georgie’s shoulders, speaking to her in a soft voice.

“…understand what I’m saying, Georgie?” she’s asking. Georgie’s eyes are on Jon, who’s standing with his back to her in some fruitless attempt to preserve her dignity.

“Yes,” Georgie lies. She clutches the cop’s hand. It’s warm and _fuck_ , Georgie hasn’t realized how much she’s missed human contact with only Nikola for company. “She’s coming back. She said she’s coming back.”

“Well then let’s get the fuck out of here,” the blonde cop says shortly, gripping her gun with both hands. “Basira, you got her?”

“I’ve got her,” says the hijabi softly, and then, “Georgie, can you walk?”

“Yes,” Georgie replies before she knows whether it’s true, and she ends up with her arm slung over Basira’s back as the other woman supports her. But she’s leaving of her own will ( _right?)_ and nobody’s carrying her anywhere.

When they leave the bedroom, Georgie’s startled by the sudden rush of cold air. She hasn’t left the bedroom since Nikola had her first brought there, and the temperature change is startling. She stumbles a little, but Basira doesn’t comment, just adjusts for her weight, and Georgie’s grateful.

“Did you find her?” she hears a familiar voice saying, right before Melanie barrels into her with a hug that nearly knocks her off her feet. “Georgie!”

“Mel,” she manages, and the smile feels foreign on her face as she returns the hug. Her best friend _beams_ at her, but there are tears in her eyes too. Melanie looks slightly manic, with stuffing in her hair and blood across her cheek, but Georgie’s so happy she could kiss her. Melanie begins apologizing almost as soon as they’re in Basira’s car, Basira and Daisy in the front and Georgie, still half naked, crammed between Melanie and one of Jon’s assistants, the one who’d awkwardly introduced himself as Tim, who’s clutching his shoulder. Georgie finds herself too relieved by all the human contact to be embarrassed of her own state.

“Do you want us to take you home, Georgie?” Basira asks from the front, and the _yes_ is stale on Georgie’s tongue before she utters it. She hesitates, and Melanie clutches her hand. “You can stay with me if you want,” she offers, so gentle and _so soft_ , and Georgie nods and tries not to cry as Melanie rattles off her address.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter is the Good Ending, and after that the alternate Bad Ending, so you can pick which one you'd like to be canon and all that.


	3. bad ending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Georgie stands in a room full of funhouse mirrors, and she doesn’t remember which distorted image is her own any more.
> 
> \--  
> the first of two endings to be posted. this is the Bad One.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> recommended music:   
> Terrible Thing by AG
> 
> read through the tags before continuing. added warnings of memory loss, identity theft, dehumanization, other dark content.

Georgie’s head is cushioned by something soft when she wakes, and there’s a softer touch -fingers, she realizes slowly -running through her hair. She’s naked, kneeling on a cold surface with her head bent awkwardly into someone’s lap, and she thinks she remembers her clothes being cut off with a pair of doll scissors that hadn’t scratched her skin nearly as deeply as the scalpels that came next.

Her breath quickens when those same fingers trace their way across her left cheekbone. But they —they _can’t_ be the same fingers as the ones Georgie remembers, because those were white (plastic?) and the light glinted so cruelly off of them, and these are dark and made of flesh, which means there have to be bones beneath, and the blank white fingers had no bones, she’s certain.

“Who are you?” she manages through a dry throat, lost and so, so confused.

More obscure familiarity as the voice above her chuckles, soft and affectionate. Somehow nostalgic of a lowly lit room — _was it a bar? but that can’t be right she hasn’t been out drinking since college._

“You’re getting better, хорошенький,” the voice coos. It’s too _saccharine_. Georgie doesn’t know how she knows it’s wrong, how she knows it should be in a room with books (what was the word for that?) and not here, in this too-big building with the cold floors and the soft rhythm of feet slapping against the floor in an eternal dance.

“I mean it, you know,” the wrongnotwrong voice continues, raking those spindly hands through Georgie’s hair, tighter and tighter. “You couldn’t even speak the last time I woke you up and took you out.”

“Answer, me,” Georgie pants, and the effort shouldn’t drain her as much as it does.

The thing doesn’t sound any less thrilled. “Well, I’m _Jon_ , darling.”

“Jon?” she repeats through a dry throat. Her head is muddled, and it hurts to think, but that still can’t be right. Did Jon know Russian? Those fingers scratch her scalp and Georgie releases a sigh. It’s so much _easier_ just to agree.

“Yes. Jonathan Sims, your boyfriend. I was the Archivist.”

“That sounds important.”

A soft laugh from above her, _almost_ gentle. “It isn’t, pet. Not any more.”

Georgie knows she should be worried, but her eyes are already slipping closed again, and sleep tastes like cotton stuffing.

Georgie stands in a room full of funhouse mirrors, and she doesn’t remember which distorted image is her own any more. They all move when she moves, after all. It probably isn’t important for her to know. If it was important, her boyfriend would surely tell her.

Because she’s naked, Georgie can see the clumsy stitches criss-crossing her body. Somebody had signed their work across the tight skin of her hip, _NIKOLA_ in stilted, knotting thread. “Ni-kol-a,” Georgie sounds it out, tracing her fingers over the unfamiliar, stiff thread marking her body.

She’s looking down, so she has no warning of her boyfriend’s appearance behind her (but why should she need warning? they’re in love, that’s what he’d said).

“You’ve such a lovely voicebox, кукла,” Jon reassures her. It’s very kind of him to do so. She has such a thoughtful boyfriend, even if she can’t remember where they met. His thin fingers trace the thread signature almost reverently.

“Jon?”

“Yes?”

She blinks _hard_ , can’t remember why it’s important but doesn’t want Jon to see her cry. “I can’t remember my name,” she admits.

The smile spreads across his too-tight skin like a bloodstain. “That’s just fine, dear.”

“It is?”

“Yes. Names are overrated, I’ve been saying it for centuries.”

“Wh-what?” They’re waltzing now, they’re waltzing in all the mirrors so they must be doing it for real too, with his hand on the curve of her hip and her arms around his neck. She doesn’t remember a time when they weren’t waltzing.

There’s something condescending in his laugh that itches at the edge of her memories. “Too fast? Alright, котенок. We’ll call you…Nikola.”

The sheets are too rough against her sensitive skin, which is flushed red where the needle had dug in. There are other bodies, more than just the two of them. _bodies_. She means people, doesn’t she?

“Don’t be scared, Nikola,” Jon coos. She’s curled up in his lap like a child, hiding. How stupid of her. “These are your friends. You’ve known them for years.”

And peeking out, she finds that she _does_ know them; she remembers Danny, and Sarah, and pretty Basira, who always smelled of tears. _hadn’t there been a different Basira? who smelled like gun powder and old books and not dead flesh and flies_

“You’re thinking too much, Nikola,” says Danny, or maybe it’s Sarah. It’s hard to tell the difference between so much pale skin when they’re all crawling over her like this, but she remembers Jon’s laugh, because it’s as familiar to her as the name branding her skin.

“Don’t hurt her too bad,” Jon calls. His voice sounds far away, as Danny-or-Sarah flicks experimentally at a nipple. “I’ve only got one real live human, after all.”

“I wish you’d take her out of her box more often,” says the one who shouldn’t be called Basira, teasing an eager kiss out of Nikola’s lips. “We do get so _terribly_ bored, killing what’s left of the others for you. They don’t even put up fights anymore, except for the spiders.”

“You’re lucky I’m letting you play with her at all,” her boyfriend retaliates, distantly, as Nikola shudders through an unfeeling orgasm. Thousands of hands map her stomach, her spine, the spaces between her teeth.

“After all, I won her fair and square.”


	4. Good Ending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melanie thinks she’s better. Melanie has stopped recommending therapy. Melanie still takes her out to shows and parties sometimes, and Georgie puts glitter on her eyelids and a smile on her face and pretends that she doesn’t hate crowds.
> 
> \--  
> the good ending

Georgie first hears about it from the news reports. _Massive explosion at local wax museum_ and all that. She’s sitting on Melanie’s sofa drinking a cup of cocoa, and the hot liquid sloshes over the lip of the mug and burns her fingers. She registers it, numbly, and then she’s setting the cup down and reaching for the phone without pausing to wipe off the burning cocoa.

Melanie picks up on the second ring, “Hey, Georgie!” She sounds elated, flushed with victory, and that has to be a good sign.

“What happened?” Georgie breathes immediately.

“ _What happened_ is that a certain bastard is about to get what he deserves -shut up, Martin, it’s just Georgie. Oh. Martin says hi.”

Georgie smiles. She’s gripping the phone so tightly that her nails dig into the plastic. “Hi, Martin. I mean, what happened at the wax museum? Is ( _nikola_ )—is everyone alright?”

“Oh! Right, of course. Jon and the others went to blow up the wax museum, to stop the Stranger’s ritual,” Melanie explains, and she still sounds so damn happy and Georgie wants to slap her. “Uh, Basira got out of it and called. She hasn’t seen or heard from anyone else, but emergency crews are going in now. The world as we know it is still here, so…”

 _Nikola?_ Georgie thinks, but she says, “And Jon?”

“I don’t…” Melanie sighs. “I don’t know, Georgie. I’m so sorry. I’ll tell Basira to call you if there are any updates.”

“Okay.”

“Love you, girl.”

“Yeah.” Georgie hangs up. One of her nails had broken, probably from her stranglehold on the landline. She hadn’t even noticed, but now it _hurts_.

She’s still in her sweats and ratty jumper when she takes the train down to the remains of the wax museum. She gets as far as the emergency crews before she’s stopped, and no matter what Georgie says, they won’t let her in.

It smells like burning plastic and Georgie doesn’t know how long she’s been crying.

Georgie keeps staying with Melanie, and she keeps recording her podcast. She knows Melanie thinks it’ll help stave off her depression, and she doesn’t have the heart to tell her it’s not working the way it’s supposed to. At some point she stops sleeping on the pullout couch and starts sleeping in Melanie’s bed, feeling Melanie’s hot breath on her face as a reminder that they’re both alive. That there’s no logical reason for the empty, hollow bit inside her to pulse the way it does.

Melanie thinks she’s better. Melanie has stopped recommending therapy. Melanie still takes her out to shows and parties sometimes, and Georgie puts glitter on her eyelids and a smile on her face and pretends that she doesn’t hate crowds.

Finding a way to sneak past the police barriers into the remains of the wax museum isn’t as hard as it perhaps should be. Georgie does it on a rainy day, the sort of rain that’s mostly bluster and mist, with the hood of her windbreaker over her head. She ducks under an unguarded police barricade, feeling absurdly like Melanie ( _stupid and reckless and desperate)_ , and then she’s in what’s left of the museum.

Georgie finds a mannequin head, plastic and covered in mold. She knows it’s not Nikola’s.

She kicks it anyway, and watches it bounce off the rubble and tilt up towards her. There’s a mocking smile in its faceless head, and Georgie wants to scream in rage.

She visits Jon in the hospital, and he visits her in her dreams. On one of her visits, she bumps into a man who smells like saltwater and the aching knowledge that no one cares about you.

“Excuse me,” she says politely, and shoulders past too quickly to catch his look of surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for all the support for this fic! it's my first foray into the fandom, and i was overwhelmed by how lovely you all are <3

**Author's Note:**

> don't look at me like that.


End file.
